Boston Mayor Michelle Wu delivered town’s first “State of the Schools” deal with Tuesday night time, an optimistic speech specializing in the district’s achievements, saying a pair new targets and packages, and issuing a “call to action for every sector of our city” to get entangled with BPS.
“When our administration started, school communities were feeling the impact of the pandemic — and five superintendents in just seven years,” Wu mentioned. … “Today, we’re outperforming all ten of what state administrators track as our comparable peer districts. After years of instability, we’re seeing real, meaningful progress. But we’re not yet where we need to be.”
The State of the Colleges speech, delivered to a full Josiah Quincy Higher Faculty auditorium in Chinatown on Tuesday night time, congratulated district management, college communities and metropolis companions and touched on a variety of points: amenities upkeep, tutorial rigor, early faculty and AP programs, bus timeliness, federal funding cuts, particular training and bilingual packages, and extra.
Wu, nevertheless, didn’t deal with a number of controversial points in her speech Tuesday night time, together with the continued modifications to examination college admissions and the continued lag in MCAS testing scores behind pre-pandemic ranges.
The start of the mayor’s speech cited accountability knowledge launched by the state final month, noting “after being stuck in the bottom 10% of schools in the state for more than a decade, BPS has leapfrogged 28 other school districts in the last three years.”
Wu adopted up on her feedback in a press convention after the speech, saying the MCAS and state-monitored metrics like continual absenteeism or commencement charges are “not where we want to be, but it shows remarkable progress and a glimpse of what’s possible when we give our educators and students the resources that they need.”
The 2025 knowledge confirmed BPS noticed beneficial properties like elevated MCAS scores for youthful grades, decreased continual absenteeism charges, and a five-year excessive in highschool multilingual learner’s English proficiency charge. But it surely additionally pointed to many continued sobering challenges like all MCAS scores lagged behind the pre-pandemic 2019 scores and nonetheless nearly half of excessive schoolers have been chronically absent.
Following the speech, the Boston Lecturers Union applauded the mayor’s resolution to introduce the education-centered speech yearly, in addition to the mayor’s protection of immigrant college students and households and “unprecedented” funding in class buildings.
“At the same time, we are concerned about the possibility that the momentum will stall — and now more than ever we need to continue to prioritize new buildings along with significant renovations, because too many of our students continue to learn in dilapidated school buildings,” BTU President Erik Berg mentioned. “Even if we continue building a new school every single year, it will take 109 years to replace every school building. The BTU continues to call for multiple new builds and renovations each year.”
BTU management additionally expressed concern with federal funding cuts and known as on town and state to offer investments to “meet the needs of our most vulnerable learners.”
Exterior the highschool venue on Tuesday, a number of educators and group members gathered signatures to increase bilingual training, and quite a lot of individuals held indicators associated to the difficulty in several languages inside.
The mayor made just a few bulletins in Tuesday night time’s speech, beginning off by telling households they will now for the primary time ever register their children for faculties on-line in 10 languages. The brand new on-line registration is obtainable at greatstarts.boston.
The district can even launch a “Wicked Math” program, “a brand new partnership with EdVestors, The Young People’s Project, and The Calculus Project to start advanced math clubs, strengthen math pathways, and train juniors and seniors as tutors for younger students,” Wu introduced.
Wu additionally said a brand new citywide objective to make before- and after-school packages obtainable and accessible in each college, beginning with 20 group hub faculties. Town doesn’t have the packages at 17% of faculties at present, and lots of the packages don’t settle for state vouchers or have sufficient spots, the mayor famous.
In this system enlargement, “if you qualify for a voucher, you can use it at the school your child attends,” Wu mentioned.
Wu hit on a number of knowledge factors oft-heralded by BPS within the final 12 months, together with that the district has taken on extra main amenities initiatives in 4 years than the final 40 years, 96% of faculties meals are actually cooked in-house, 92% of faculties have working A/Cs, 16 new bilingual packages have launched, a report 10,500 college students participated in the summertime jobs program, and extra.
“This fall we’ve had the best start to the school year on record,” Wu mentioned Tuesday night time. “More buses arrived on time in September and October than ever before. Yesterday, 96% of buses arrived on time.”
BPS has additionally seen a rise from 179 excessive schoolers taking early faculty programs in BPS in 2022 to 790 final 12 months and over 1,200 this 12 months, Wu highlighted.
“Since 2019 Boston has seen a greater increase in students taking AP courses than virtually every other American city,” Wu mentioned. “In 2025 our students took nearly 7,500 AP exams and earned the three or higher on more than two thirds of them. That is a nine point jump in just a year, and the best performance on AP exams in our city’s history.”
Wu challenged the viewers to “name another city” the place each younger individual is assured a summer season job, creating highschool to well being profession pathways with a accomplice like Mass Normal Brigham, or partnering free of charge tickets to cultural establishments for college kids.
“No community on Earth fights harder for the future we know our students deserve,” Wu mentioned. “And we need your help to do even more.”
The mayor known as companions throughout town — itemizing “businesses, labs, colleges, and hospitals” — to get entangled with BPS packages like Principal Companions and the Youth Jobs Honest.
Within the post-speech press convention, Wu additionally addressed the controversial plan to drop 17 faculties by way of closures and mergers by 2030.
“When it comes to the mergers, closures, consolidations, all of the facilities and community proposals, that has been after building a foundation of three years of community engagement,” Wu mentioned. “To start first with asking our communities, ‘What do you think every school should have as a baseline?’”
The mayor cited the Services Circumstances Evaluation Dashboard launched underneath her administration, exhibiting the situations of every BPS college, and known as the venture an “opportunity to see renewal and reinvestment in all sorts of different ways.”
Each Boston Faculty Committee Chair Jeri Robinson and BPS Superintendent Mary Skipper additionally spoke Tuesday night time, praising Wu’s partnership and funding in training.
Skipper answered her three highest precedence areas going ahead post-speech, itemizing the district’s achievement and alternative hole, accessibility, and early childhood alternatives.
“We are the oldest public school system in the nation,” Wu concluded her speech. “And, together, it’s time that we make it the best. Thank you for being the village that does this work with us.”
